


Beatific

by shinaho



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Drabble, Introspection, M/M, Violence, i guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-16
Updated: 2018-06-16
Packaged: 2019-05-24 01:41:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,253
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14945250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinaho/pseuds/shinaho
Summary: Byleth prays and prays. If god is real, let him be forgiving.





	Beatific

**Author's Note:**

> shoutout 2 the gayZ i do this for YOU

Byleth grew up in a small town, with a large church. In a small house, with a large family. With his mother’s small heart and her large expectations. With his small and meaningless life but a larger good to work towards. 

He was named after the the ruler of hell, a king to be revered. Byleth learned stories of this man, commanding legions of demons from atop his horse, and he knew his family one day wanted him to live up to that name. He would have to fight for the church, live for the church, die for the church. There was nothing more to it than that. 

It was scary. He was scared. He was not yet an adult, but he was expected to carry the world on his shoulders. 

And so he ran. He ran and ran and ran where his family would never find him. He ran away from his destiny, his responsibilities, his fate. He ran until his feet would carry him no more, and then some. 

He had no where to go. And so he took up arms. 

He fought for food. He fought for shelter. He fought for money. He fought against the church that controlled him, ensnared him in a web of lies and darkness. He fought for a future where he could live his own life. He fought for freedom. 

Freedom was costly, he would soon learn. 

Freedom cost him his family, the only love he ever knew, no matter how artificial and blinding it may have been. Freedom pit him against the only life he had ever known. Freedom cost him his brother’s life. Freedom forced him to watch the life drain out of his brother’s eyes. Freedom forced him to feel his brother’s still-warm blood splatter against his face. Freedom forced him to watch his own brother, with aegean blue hair and sharp eyes so much like his own, fall to the ground, never again to get back up. 

Byleth couldn’t sleep for days after that. The blood money he earned wasn’t going to last much longer. He had nowhere to go, nothing to do. Suddenly he felt young again, trembling alone in the bedroom he shared with his siblings, because he didn’t want the salvation their so-called god offered. But now he was older, and he collapsed in his pathetic little tent, the only thing he had to his name, and shook and cried out for someone, anyone to save him from this, to take him away from this, to tell him it wasn’t his fault. But it was. And he knew it was. 

He began to pray again, after a lustrum had passed. He prayed to get as far away from home as possible. To find a new place to call home, new people to call family. To forget. To forgive. To forgive his mother, his father, his brother. But most importantly to forgive himself. 

God was kind, sometimes, Byleth learned. 

He received contact from a noblewoman in Fódlan, by the name of Mercedes. She had heard good things of him from his time in the army, and invited him to train and work under the employment of Lord Claude. He hastily took the offer, and left everything behind. The only thing he took with was his family’s old religious scripture. Lest he forget them. 

Byleth never believed in love, and much less love at first sight, but he imagines what he experienced when he first saw Lord Claude was something akin to that. Byleth didn’t know if his damaged soul had the capacity for love anymore. It was simply the excitement of meeting someone new, someone attractive, and someone his own age. Nothing more. 

He would continue this line of thinking for awhile, not because he believed it, but because he didn’t deserve any other possibility. He didn’t deserve the possibility of love, after he denied the only love he had ever received in his life. But when Lord Claude smiled at him, so pure and unadulterated, filled with nothing but joy at being able to be with Byleth, he realized that maybe loving others, and being loved wasn’t such a bad thing. 

Their gentle touches, the fleeting moments they spent together, everything about their relationship was sacred. Lord Claude was the salvation that Byleth has prayed for, the escape from the chains that weighed him down. Was God looking down at Byleth? Was God finally being merciful? Byleth had to think that nothing but divine intervention could lead him to this happy end. The end where Lord Claude confessed his love in the gardens, surrounded by the smell of flowers brought by the gentle breeze. The end where Byleth didn’t run from this love, and instead embraced it. Byleth thanked God for the second chance he had been given. 

But his past didn’t just disappear. In the nights, when Claude was long asleep and Byleth was left to his own thoughts, he remembered his brother. He remembered the feeling of pulling his sword out of his own kindred’s chest. The wet sound it made, the force it took, everything was engrained in his mind, perfectly clear for him to play over and over and over and over and over and over again. 

But Claude awoke again, and the endless cycle Broke. Byleth felt the gentle weight of a blanket on his shoulders, and the hands of his lover wrapping around him for an embrace. His tears dried as he was led back to bed, for a peaceful slumber that would heal him. 

Anything Claude seemed to do was healing, in fact. 

When Claude grasped Byleth’s hand in his, and rubbed circles with his thumb under the table during strategy meetings, Byleth felt reassured. Everything would be okay. They would win, just like always. Nothing could stand in their way. Just that simple motion, the squeeze of his hand, showed him that he wasn’t alone. He had Claude, and always would, and that’s all he ever needed. 

When Byleth needed to stay up all night, drawing up a plan, filling our reports, preparing for training or battles the next morning, Claude was always there. He would have one of the maids bring in tea, and they would share it in silence, the only sound between them the scratching of Byleth’s quill on the parchment as he drew up plans. They didn’t need to speak, just being in each other’s company was enough. Claude would always fall asleep first, and Byleth would smile. 

In battle, the two of them were never far apart. Logistically, it made no sense. There was no reason for Claude to go to the front lines. He was an archer, and royalty no less. He was supposed to stay back, where he could let his arrows fly true from a distance. But he fought better with Byleth by his side, and the same was true vice versa. Byleth was weighed down by separation and the unknown, and so fighting side by side with his lover gave him bravery and strength he had never known before. 

They shared quick kisses often. When Byleth was in a particularly good mood, he would press a chaste kiss to Claude’s forehead as a greeting. Claude would litter Byleth’s face with kisses after a hard fought victory, on his cheeks and forehead and mouth and nose and anywhere he could in celebration. Byleth’s face would flush and his heart would race, not just from the fighting. 

Love was not bad, Byleth learned.

**Author's Note:**

> wow i am so damn mother Fucjgin tired bitch! it’s 4 am anyways hmu on twitter uhhhhhh celesteluvmail i luv persona 3 and byleth and claude


End file.
